28 November 2011

Look at the trees, and the faces in the trees. The old hag's faces and
the witch's warts. Misshapen figures dancing in the shadows with
shaken leaves, like bears suckling honey. Fallen branches jutting out,
like claws cupping daisies. Dark protrusions in the shade. Flower bed
circling the trunk, like a ring of dancers in twilight worship, or an eel
circling its tank, like vultures circling a carcass. The elm among
the evergreens, these bare and naked boney trees among the buildings
surrounded on all sides by scraped skies, like abandoned cities
overgrown with ivy, yet still dead and dying. The empty park
benches with names scribbled on them in ink and engraved
on metal and with knives, the arrows through the hearts bound by love
and bound by time — two names forever intertwined like a monument
of love that's a tomb dead and dying, filled with bones and dark ash
from within its whitewashed walls, like the scrawl of the nails
of a prisoner buried alive with just enough time to etch out his days
like a book that's a box made of rock with a pen that's his head
filled with ink that's unseen—and it leaks and it leaks and it leaks

I have this habit of wrapping up my thoughts in nice tidy pieces. As if, the only thoughts worth sharing were the lovely ones. In fact, I have many unlovely thoughts. Thoughts that reflect upon me in unseemly ways. Thoughts that show what I really think, and who I really am. I hide these thoughts from the public, from you, because most people just don't want to hear it. I call it the capacity for truth telling. We just don't have a very high tolerance for ugly truths. Us, Christian peoples. When we speak of having the monopoly of truths—the Gospel message. But we don't want to hear the dark things, the unsightly things, the things that crawl and creep in the night.

So the job of exploring the ugly truths goes to the secularists. The sacrilegious artists. The facetious humorists. They have all the fun with the messy things, the things that we can't yet exactly wrap up in a bow. The things that we know are there, but turn our eyes away from. I'd like to touch upon these truths. I'd like to explore them too. But to do so would reveal just how much of a sinner I am. And it's the truth. I am a sinner. But to what extent do we really believe that? To what extent can we stomach the fact that our neighbors, our friends, our family, our roommates and colleagues are all the monsters that we speak of when we tell of our darkest fears? We are the monsters—the good monsters, yes—who come out at night.

The intriguing thing about zombies is their metaphor. That thing. That undead thing. That ravenous spirit which desires the flesh of other men and will stop at nothing, even as its limbs are being torn off, and its flesh is rotting away, and its soul is dead, to have what it wants. That thing—is us. The intriguing thing about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was not the semi-magical way he transformed by potion, but it was the uncovering. The letting go. The tearing apart of all inhibition. That monster, Mr. Hyde, was part of Dr. Jekyll this whole time. He was it and it was him. And they were one in the same. So that monster, really, lurks within. The greatest battles we will fight, the greatest obstacles we will overcome in life, exist not out there, but in here. We are our own greatest enemies.

But how often do we realize it? How often are we willing to confront our own dreadful sinfulness? How often are we willing to admit to our capacity for harm? We aren't. And we don't. And we go on living lives like we aren't the things we say we are. And we go on picking up trash in beautiful dresses. And we go on writing things that no one will read because it doesn't strike that chord between beauty and truth telling because its censored. It's not even good writing. It's just honest.